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Countries With Zero Rating Have More Expensive Wireless Broadband Than Countries Without It
A comprehensive multi-year study by the non-profit Epicenter.works, comparing the 30 member countries of the European Union (EU) on net neutrality enforcement, has found that zero rating business practices by wireless carriers have increased the cost of wireless data compared to countries without zero rating. From a report: This directly contradicts all of the assertions by major wireless carriers that their zero rating practices are "free data" for consumers. Based on the evidence, zero rating not only serves as a means to enhance ISPs' power over the Internet, but it's also how they charge consumers more money for wireless service. Zero rating was originally going to be banned by the FCC under the General Conduct Rule, but when the FCC changed leadership the agency promptly green lighted and encouraged the industry to engage in zero rating practices before it began its repeal of net neutrality.
This is my shocked face. :|
It's a fairly simple rule .. if a telco claims to do something which benefits their consumers, it's a fucking lie.
By the time you are in management at one of those, you are an undeniable sociopath who only cares about doing whatever it takes to maximize profits, and your own bonus.
Nobody in management at such a company isn't a complete and utter sack of monkey crap.
Epicenter.works is an advocacy organization, not a research organization. So this "study" may be a bit biased. They have an agenda to push.
Good then you're being defeated. So nice.
Their best interests...as your best interests see it. Which inevitably means government largess to the masses.
There are other things, though.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The lawyers would be all over these guys with class action lawsuits, if they weren't all paid off.
Wow, you're an arrogant ass, aren't you. You claim to know their own best interests better than them.
Has this one occurred to you, maybe they would prefer not to have the people they vote for enact policies like this, but these policies aren't that important to them? And the people they vote for enact policies they like on stuff that they find important? Maybe other people have different priorities than you? Mind blown?
Trump 2020! Trump 2024!
I'm also thoroughly convinced it's an exercise in futility attempting to convince Trump supporters to stop voting against their own best interests.
If you want to change their votes, perhaps you could start by listening to their concerns, instead of telling them they are too stupid to vote properly. That is about the same as telling them they are deplorable, which, if you recall, wasn't a successful strategy.
The myth that Republicans vote against their own interests is based on two fallacies:
1. That they share your views about what their "best interests" are. They don't.
2. That poor states like Mississippi voted 100% Republican. Guess what? They didn't. Poor people in red states vote blue. It is the middle class where the Democrats lost.
Didn't even know that kind of shit existed. What a load of crap zero rating is.
if their vote directly hurts them, which it often does, then it is voting against their best interests.
for example republicans vote to cut the 3 large saftey nets, which that group largely depend on.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Trump 2028!
Well, you can always find a way to say the opposite. Iâ(TM)m sure some clever statistician can say that a zero rating is a good thing rather than the other way around
Not true
So Trump is actually Nehemiah Scudder then.
This makes sense; carriers have an incentive to raise the costs of exploring alternatives in order to make their preferred, zero-rated choice of content more attractive.
However, once that incentive is removed, the wireless carrier no longer has a reason to raise the cost of alternatives because nothing is given special treatment. In short, zero rating practices cost you more money.
In short, data rates are approved by gov't agencies (at least in US), and this study appears to hold every other development, both political and technological, entirely equal across all EU countries examined. Is that really true? Is everyone of the 30 countries considered exactly equal except for the few that choose to zero-rate some services for whatever reason?
Anyone else notice this gem in the "report":
The practice also has a disproportionate impact on low-income users. These users tend to only be able to afford wireless broadband services for their entire Internet experience, resulting in them receiving an inferior Internet compared to users who can afford both a wireline and wireless service.
Apparently wireless broadband is inferior to wired broadband, and since poor people can only afford mobile wireless, they suffer... The implication is that if zero-rating services didn't inflate the cost of broadband service the poor could afford both wired and wireless internet access? That's just stupid - is the claim that zero-rating doubles the cost of the data service? What is the impact o zero-rating services, as discovered by this report? It doesn't say.
And then there's this counter-logical argument, from the people that know what's best for low-income residents in California:
When the issue of zero rating came before California during its debate on net neutrality, California organizations that represent low-income Californians (such as the Western Center on Law and Poverty) as well as organizations that promote the digital civil rights of communities of color (such as the Center for Media Justice and Color of Change) all came out in strong support for California banning on zero rating.
So, all the "California organizations that represent low-income Californians (such as the Western Center on Law and Poverty) as well as organizations that promote the digital civil rights of communities of color (such as the Center for Media Justice and Color of Change)" all argued that it is in the consumers best interest to not be offered any free music or video streaming services that don't count against their data plan, it is better if they are forced to pay for the data the streaming services use. In other words, low-income, people of color, consumers are better off being forced to upgrade their data plans to more expensive tiers to accommodate their streaming needs, rather than subscribe to a lower priced tier that includes free (zero-rated) music and video streaming?
No, the reality is that these low-income "advocates" are throwing their low-income "clients" under the bus to make sure that upper and middle-class consumers pay slightly less for their broadband service.
Ken
I thought you guys were in favor of the free market? That's the entire point of NN - to allow a free market on the internet, rather than allowing the ISP oligopoly to decide winners and losers.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Then you can scale the network according to actual demand, not resorting to artificial scarcity.
Not all of us are communication nerds. Please define terms. Who is rating what at zero using what units?
what is zero rating?
everything has a rating of 0. so just garbage thing are rate?
If you're a Spark customer, you get zero rated Facebook access. Some other social media platforms too, I think.
With less than 5 million people and over 5000 cell towers though, considering the infrastructure per capita, I think we pay reasonable mobile data rates.
I pay $20 a month for 2.5GB of "rollover" data, unlimited txt messages and 300 minutes outbound calling (inbound is always free for everyone on every carrier. We live in a caller-pays country, which has made spam calls to cellphones almost non-existent.)
* That's $20NZ, which is like $13US
* There's 5133 towers listed on https://gis.geek.nz/celltowers , there may be more. They say 5,582 LTE licenses. Our population is a little under 4.8 million.
* Apparently the average tower cost is $200k, so about $1B infrastructure spread across a total of 4.8M people
I notice the study ignores how much bandwidth is used, just how much people are paying on average.
It would be interesting to see the cost per average GB used is across those countries.
Here in Brazil most data plans offer zero-rated Facebook and Whatsapp access. So, you can send/receive fake news all day long for free, but to check if they are true in some fact-checking site, you have to pay.
Non-white Poor people in red states vote blue
FTFY. And it's sill a minority of the poor people.
You know, it could be that high cell prices make zero-rating valuable, instead of zero-rating driving the price up. In fact, I'll bet that's the case. Further, if they compared cell service price to, say median income instead of comparing euros to euros, that the correlation would be even stronger.
I continue to be amazed that people be so educated but so fucking stupid
Maybe those voters have a different idea of "their best interests" than you do.
Remember, "best" is always qualitative, there is no objective right or wrong answer to it. If their perception of what's "best" for them differs from yours, you have no real grounds to claim that your answer is "better" than theirs.
Unfortunately the "free market" has never existed outside of economic theory.
Who knew that allowing corporations to be people would fuck the free market?,
A lot of us saw this coming.
I thought you guys were in favor of the free market?
We were...and we are! Unless Putin said otherwise and the tweet hasn't gone out yet....we should know for sure by the next time fox and friends airs.
There is no free lunch. If it's free for you, someone is paying twice.
That internet becomes more expensive for generic use is a safe bet, but there will be people satisfied with the big business subsidised subset of the internet. In the words of EFF, you get an "inferior Internet" ... but you can get it cheaper.
By making the superior internet the only one you can buy, poor people lose something too. There are good arguments to make that decision on behalf of society, but lets not pretend there aren't any poor people becoming losers in this scenario.
It really doesn't matter who you vote for at this point the lesser of two evils is still evil.
When faced with voting you cross your fingers and pick who ever you think will do the least amount of damage or you vote for some independent that has no chance and still isn't guaranteed not to mess everything up if by some miracle they did win.
No one has your best interests in mind all the time except you so if you always want to vote in your best interest you can just write yourself in.
Remember, "best" is always qualitative,
That is not true. Comparing identical services from two different companies and deciding which to pick based on price is a quantitative "better". (Make it three companies and you can say "best".)
The word you are possibly looking for is "subjective", which is also not really true. The "best" in the example I just used is still objective.
"Best" becomes subjective when different weights are applied to different criteria, and the things being compared are not essentially identical in all ways.
If their perception of what's "best" for them differs from yours, you have no real grounds to claim that your answer is "better" than theirs.
That is the significant part of your statement. People who claim others are 'voting against their own best interests' are assuming their evaluation of the situation is the only possible one. The word for that is "arrogance".
Don't you want less evil?
It seems like common sense -- carriers are selling bandwidth at wholesale rates to large companies that provide "free" service, so they jack up the retail rates paid by consumers to compensate.
I thought you guys were in favor of the free market? That's the entire point of NN - to allow a free market on the internet, rather than allowing the ISP oligopoly to decide winners and losers.
"Free Market" usually means a minimum amount (some people want zero) of government regulation. The purpose of Network Neutrality is to enforce a Fair Market, in which content providers compete with each other based on the value of their service instead of based on the abuse of ISPs' monopoly position.
Proponents of free-market capitalism either make no distinction between a Free Market and a Fair Market, or they assume, as an article of faith, that a Fair Market is an inevitable consequence of having a Free Market. Some of us, on the other hand, see plenty of evidence that such an assumption is not valid.
I'm also thoroughly convinced it's an exercise in futility attempting to convince Trump supporters to stop voting against their own best interests.
If you want to change their votes, perhaps you could start by listening to their concerns, instead of telling them they are too stupid to vote properly.
Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. I need to take you on a trip through my area. First off, we drive by a lot of 1960's era mobile homes in the country. with a washing machine, a refrigerator, and every car or truck the person ever bought, all structures and vehicles in an impressive state of decay. But they have a very nice 4 by 8 foot Trump Make America Great Again poster in the yard. Yet their earthly posessions remain more dilapidated, seems to be an employment problem as well. And they look worse off than before the election.
Next, we drive by miles and miles of fields with soybeans that haven't been harvested, the honest work of farmers who at one point thought Trump would bring them much largess, having made America great again. But then there are those tarriffs.
The farmers were astute enough to take down their Trump posters.
Me? I've actually benefited from Trump's actions. I do know however that while it benefits me and my money, it isn't helping many of the people who did actually think they were somehow going to make their own lives better by voting for the very archetype of the opposite in the flesh.
But hey - Although I know it is shortsighted, and harms the poorest, if they want to vote for people like Trump who will put more money in my bank account, at least there is that. Vote Republican, I can maybe take another vacation this year.
tl;dr version - if they want to vote against their self interests and in favor of mine, by all means Vote TRUMP 2020, Make Ol Olsoc's bank account fuller. I won't ridicule them.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Unless your ISP operates as a charity instead of a business, there is no such thing as "zero rating." Business is the process of offering a value in return for something the business considers more valuable.
Ask yourself how the business benefits, and you'll discover how you are paying. Hint: it won't be zero, or it won't be in business much longer.
Lets look at the dictionary definition, shall we?
free market /fr märkt/
Dictionary result for free market
noun: free market; plural noun: free markets; modifier noun: free-market
an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.
Unrestricted competition requires competition - which requires the government to do something to prevent the formation of monopolies and oligopolies.
Now, I'd be willing to settle for the government just coming in and breaking up any company that took more than a tiny slice of any given market, but there's obviously no interest in doing that on either side of the aisle. So the question becomes, should we allow monopolies to leverage their power into additional markets?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The title implies a correlation between zero rating and high mobile costs. That could mean that higher costs encourage zero rating, or no causation exists. However, the title is a crappy summary that omits the key takeawy of the study. What the study shows is that making zero rating legal leads to higher prices than they otherwise would be. The actual study measures the change in cost when zero rating is made legal vs. the change in cost of neighboring EU countries where zero rating is not. While there are other differences between counties, that's as good an experiment as you are likely to get in the real world. What they found is that countries that legalized zero rating had rates that went up. Countries that did not legalize zero rating actually had rates that went down.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Non-white Poor people in red states vote blue
FTFY. And it's sill a minority of the poor people.
There is a trick to getting one issue voters to vote for your party.
The best example I can think of is the evangelical anti-abortion people. For years you could rally them to your cause by proclaiming that you were anti-abortion and didn't believe in evolution. And while in recent years, the candidate wishing to offer succor to this group had to temper their anti evolution screeds to "Well, I'm not a scientist", because anti evolution is on the same plane as flat earth , chemtrails and moon landing fakes. But if you proclaim to be anti abortion, the anti abortion voters will vote for you no matter what else you do. The present occupant is the perfect example. Dalliances with porn stars and paying them off while his own wife is with child would seem to be sinful - after all, I know the evangelicals were in hyperventilation mode that a president got a consensual blowjob from a woman. Ah.. remember the Party of the High Moral Ground and "Values Matter!" days? Good heady times, amirite? But no, they support him in all he does.
Now seriously evangelicals, do you think that a man with the curriculum vitae of the present occupant is really anti-abortion? But if he says the right words - you slobber over him more than Stormy Daniels ever did.
Then again, the Evangelicals have the stick-to-itivity of Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner, you have to give them that. They'll come back to vote for whoever says the magic words again and again. The shivering truth is that as long as all a politician has to say is that he wants to make abortion illegal and you'll supplicate at his or her feet, you can bet that they'll make certain to use that Trump card again and again. (no pun intended) If they actually did outlaw it, they'd lose a big wedge issue.
And this is why the party of NO! always falls down the little hole in the shithouse when they are in the majority. They don't really have any actual ideas other than saying no.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If you want to change their votes, perhaps you could start by listening to their concerns, instead of telling them they are too stupid to vote properly.
I get the feeling that most politicians of both are just listening to themselves these days.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The timing of NN was to buy some votes when they started worrying about the secuity of Hilary's coronation. The point of NN was to inject CALEA into the internet. Think about this. Ajit Pai was the one who stopped warrantless wiretapping of the internet by every city, county and state. Obama's administration authorized it by declaring the internet to be a Voice Service instead of a Data Service.
The issue with that definition is that it doesn't say who/what isn't imposing any restrictions. It's pretty much impossible to have a market with no restrictions at all; either large companies can become monopolies and restrict competitors, or the government can restrict large companies from becoming monopolies.
Having said that, I do agree with your conclusion. The best result from a market-based economy is when we have competition in a Fair Market, which is what you're saying you want, and I don't see how we can have a Fair Market without some amount of government intervention to ensure that there's fair competition.
The myth that Republicans vote against their own interests is based on two fallacies:
Actually, I don't think they vote against their own interests for either of those reasons. I think they have and are being deliberately disinformed and propagandized via Fox News and living in social media bubbles. Many others are simply uninformed and vote like they have always voted. I don't think people who vote for Republicans are dumb at all, just mislead by opportunistic billionaires.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
And for some reason you think this is suprising and outrageous? For pro-lifers abortion is murder, and consequently, legal abortion is an ongoing Holocaust-scale genocide. You really expect people to go "oh let's ignore the guy who promises to stop the Holocaust, because someone photographed him with a prostitute, let's instead vote for the pro-abortion guy"?
Where's this "fair market" term coming from? I can't even find any reference to it on Google.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
If you want to change their votes, perhaps you could start by listening to their concerns, instead of telling them they are too stupid to vote properly.
You mean the people who said "You made me vote for Trump by calling me stupid for voting for Trump!"
I'm pretty sure they aren't interested in an honest discussion.
When one part argues in bad faith it does little good for the other part to engage in any discussion.
Me? I've actually benefited from Trump's actions.
Come back next year when the tax cuts for the middle class ends while the one for the rich is permanent.
Well, unless you have an income over $10 million that is, then congratulations, you'll probably do fine regardless of who are in charge.
Now seriously evangelicals, do you think that a man with the curriculum vitae of the present occupant is really anti-abortion?
It doesn't matter what his personal view are. All that matters is who he appoints to the Supreme Court.
So far, he has delivered to the evangelicals exactly what they want: Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
The couldn't be happier. Neil and Brett will be on the court for many decades.
The Senate is still Republican, and they may get another seat. RBG is 85. Stephen Breyer is 80.
Yes, so that means not voting for Trump and his cronies.
UE with 30 member countries? Last time I heard about it it was 28. Did EU include Ukraine and Turkey in the meantime?
My brain? I can't imagine that I'm the first person to draw this distinction, but I couldn't say specifically if or where I saw it before I started using it.
And for some reason you think this is suprising and outrageous?
I said no such thing, anger person!
For pro-lifers abortion is murder, and consequently, legal abortion is an ongoing Holocaust-scale genocide.
Well, anger person - I'm anti abortion as well. I'm not pro life because there are a whole lot of things that pro lifers are involved in that are just anti-sex.
Abstinence based sex education, which has introduced a lot of teens to anal sex. Opposition to a lifesaving HPV vaccine because it will somehow promote promiscuity. Yer idea is screwed.
I'm in favor of teenagers knowing about contraception, and being encouraged to use it if they plan on engaging in sexual activities.
You get the abortion rate down mighty far simply by not having pregnant ladies having abortion as an option. We have extended childhood well beyond actual childhood, and what used to be adulthood. Both mine and my wife's great grandparents were married at 13. All the sex you want within the confines of marriage. Thinking that teenagers with their supercharged sex drives are going to abstain is stupid, and all the "acceptable" sex education methods have done is increase the popularity of anal and oral sex as teenagers attempt to sat their sex drives and remain technical virgins.
Did you know that the good wives of the Good conservatives did before Roe V Wade? It's called a D and C, or Dialation and Curettage. A lot of women had this problem that needed taken care of every so oftne. Seemed to be pretty much cured after RvW.
You really expect people to go "oh let's ignore the guy who promises to stop the Holocaust, because someone photographed him with a prostitute, let's instead vote for the pro-abortion guy"?
You want less abortions, enable less pregnancies.
Omigawd, I'm really struggling to not call you a dumbass. He isn't going to change the laws, they aren't going to change the laws. They want you to vote for them because all they have to do is say what you want to hear, and you'll keep coming back like Charlie Brown kicking the football that Lucy is holding, only to have her pull it away.. You'll be squealing forever, and rising to the bait forever.
And you, dear coward - have made my point exactly.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Unrestricted competition requires competition - which requires the government to do something to prevent the formation of monopolies and oligopolies.
The problem is that in the USA (and in some other countries as well) government regulation has tended to encourage monopolies rather than discouraging them. They're not true monopolies in the sense that no one company has complete control of the entire market, but the barrier to entry has been raised to such absurd heights that the existing companies have no real fear of competition.
I feel the same way about Hillary voters. I don't think they vote against their own interests for either of those reasons. I think they have and are being deliberately disinformed and propagandized via CNN, MSNBC, Huffpo, etc, and are living in social media bubbles. Many others are simply uninformed and vote like they have always voted. I don't think people who vote for Democrat are dumb at all, just mislead by opportunistic billionaires.
I think you may be redefining terms - what you describe as the distinction between a free market and a fair market sounds an awful lot like the distinction between an unregulated market and a free market.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Very well could be. When I post stuff on Slashdot, I go with what seems to be the most common definition around here, which says "free market" means "OMG e-e-e-evil gubmint!"
That's where the term oligopoly comes in - a small handful of companies that control a market and conspire to reap the benefits of a monopoly.
As for the problem - I agree. Most regulations are required, in principle, as they are enacted as a direct response to abuses that already existed at the time. Sadly, when the companies being regulated can legally buy off the regulators (it's not a bribery if you call it lobbying and campaign contributions, right?) the regulations do tend to be sculpted to be as lax as possible, while also being as expensive as possible for small competitors to comply with.
I don't really see a solution, but simply repealing the regulations generally seems like a very bad idea, as it simply gives the green light to go back to committing whatever malfeasance demanded the regulation in the first place. It would probably help quite a bit if executives and stockholders were held personally responsible for the malfeasance of their company - but that seems extremely unlikely to happen any time soon.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
If you want to change their votes, perhaps you could start by listening to their concerns, instead of telling them they are too stupid to vote properly.
The problem is, if the Democrats came out and said (for example) "Hey, we've been doing some soul searching and it turns out coal really isn't so bad", it would just appear to be disingenuous pandering to the Trump supporters, but would seriously piss off the environmentalists. The whole reason politics has become so polarized as of late is both sides are afraid of appearing "weak" to their base supporters, even if it costs them the ability to swing a few votes from the other side.
The myth that Republicans vote against their own interests is based on two fallacies:
1. That they share your views about what their "best interests" are. They don't.
If you support political positions which objectively worsen your standard of living - you're voting against your own best interests. If your standard of living has dropped, yet you still support the same party - you might want to read up on cogitative dissonance.
2. That poor states like Mississippi voted 100% Republican. Guess what? They didn't. Poor people in red states vote blue. It is the middle class where the Democrats lost.
Therein lies the problem our current implementation of Democracy. You only need a platform that >50% of the people who actually get off their ass and go vote feels is working well enough, to claim victory. If you really wanted to see parties attempting to cross the isle and work with everyone, require a bigger majority to win, and run off the election (as many times as necessary) if you don't get it the first time.
It will obviously never happen, because no politician would risk *any* controversial positions, if they knew they needed 60% (or thereabouts) of the vote to win.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I think they have and are being deliberately disinformed and propagandized via Fox News and living in social media bubbles.
This was very evident when a whole lot voted in politicians promising to end Obamacare, and turned out to be horrified when bits of it got the axe because they rather liked the Affordable Care Act and the insurance it got them.
I don't think people who vote for Republicans are dumb at all, just mislead by opportunistic billionaires.
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.
I don't know another word for when you constantly get bamboozled and either don't understand that it happened or believe that it won't happen again despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
in part, out of a need for agency and control over their own body. Perhaps I am being unfair, but every time I hear a parent complain about 'my kids learned cutting from XYZ and then kill themselves', I wonder just how abusive the parent was
That still doesn't justify voting FOR a Democrat.
Which is an implication considering the words that were used.
(I am not democrat or republican, so don't waste your time going down the route of me being a republican and bringing this up as an excuse to vote republican.)
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen